Updated: More criticism for Cuban’s so-called journalism

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine has joined the growing number of journalists blasting Mark Cuban’s Sharesleuth venture. Jarvis weighs in with this lengthy post that also notes that Cuban has been chosen as the keynote speaker for this year’s Online News Association gathering.

Jarvis — who like me, doesn’t seem as thankful as Cuban thinks we should be — makes a lot of good points about what’s wrong with Sharesleuth. But he also raises some good questions about why Cuban was chosen to speak to the ONA.

Are they presenting him as some paragon of journalism? Some new kind of media mogul? Some opponent of journalism’s old ways? Or a circus act? I’m bringing popcorn.

Jarvis also comes to the same conclusion I did in my column on Sharesleuth earlier this month:

If Cuban had just started a new journalistic endeavor to show the way and shame the business press into reporting and investigating — not to mention to create jobs for reporters — he might have been welcomed with open arms. I’ll bet that there are plenty of ripped-off shareholders out there who’d have gladly contributed to make this a success. And advertisers would want to talk to an audience of smart investors. But by turning this into a personal and shady profit center, by trying to play the bad boy in this arena as he does in the basketball arena, he harmed his endeavor, his reputation, and even the nascent movement in independent journalism. Just so he could make a few bucks. Now that’s what I call dumb money.

Meanwhile, Ben Silverman is similarly unimpressed in this column on Yahoo Finance.

By the way, I just noticed that Silverman uses the title Full Disclosure on his column. I wonder how long before a group of California businesswomen threaten to sue him.

Update (8/22): Cuban offers this response, which is more of the same. But the best line goes to Gary Weiss, who in his own post on the Jarvis-Cuban squabble, makes this observation:

Jarvis points out that Cuban is keynote speaker at the Online News Association annual meeting– which is something akin to Jeffrey Dahmer being guest speaker at the Culinary Institute of America.